I’m always had Labradors, but was currently without a dog.  A starving Beagle puppy (~3-4 month) moved under my porch.  One thing led to another and now I have a Beagle.  I’m working on Sit, Stay, Heel (follow me) and Hunt (I follow him).  I would appreciate any tips from Beagle owners.

They're pack animals. When they're young they stay with you. As they get older they'll get stubborn and would rather follow a scent. They're smart and can ring bells to be let out, recognize that if you start counting they'd better move by THREE, and are attention whores.
Great dogs. A buddy once told me they have three brain cells, and two are dedicated to their nose. It sounded about right. Then we got a coon hound and she makes the Beagle look like a canine MENSA member.

As mentioned above they tend to become stubborn and follow more scents than listen as they get older.

My last beagle would climb trees because he was following a scent. He also was very smart and he would let me know if he wanted outside, wanted water etc.

VERY food driven will do anything for food, including choke themselves.

Both of the beagles I owned in the past were terrified of water, they would never go near it unless it was already in their water bowl.

I loved my beagles, very vocal but loyal dogs. Love attention.

Rippin' smart.

Unbelievable escape artists. Consider a GPS dog tracker. Seriously. Did I mention smart?

Very food motivated, as noted above. Do not leave any unsecured.

Difficult to obedience train, but will hunt all day. However I have seen a number of obedience trained Beagles.

Everyone I know that has one enjoys the hell out of their companionship.

My friend just rescued one from a puppy mill a week ago.  She took him out to pee and a Harley doosh with ridiculous pipes opened it up right in front of them as he went by.  Little guy freaked out, slipped his harness, and ran two miles before getting run over by an SUV.  My friend is quite the runner and didn't stand a chance of keeping up.  The rescue org lady said she'd gotten that phone call more times than she could remember, and if they don't get run over they're typically found 6-8 miles away before they finally settle down after getting startled like that.  She recommended double-leashing: using one leash on a *good* harness and another leash on a collar and carrying both.  Seems like overkill for such a small dog but not after this event.  When they get spooked they go nuts.

Another friend had a beagle that was smart enough to push a chair to the kitchen counter to jump up onto the counter and open up the upper cabinets.  He spent a lot of money at the vet getting that thing's stomach pumped.  One time he ate 12 individually wrapped protein bars.  Another time he ate a Costco sized bag of peanut M&Ms.  Pet insurance might be a good idea.

I've always had labs too.  They're the best.  And mine earns his food by hunting and retrieving pheasant like a pro.

I had one, first dog I got to pick out. He was the runt of the litter. The breeder had sold all his pups to a chain of pet stores when he was misdiagnosed with terminal cancer.  The guy at the pet store tried to talk me out of taking him but I liked him the best of the 3 pups they had there. He wasn't a runt for long, he ended up being the biggest Beagle I've ever seen, a clone of his sire, a big time Field Champ. He wasn't cuddly at all, but he played anytime you wanted to even just before he collapsed and died a week or so before he would have been 12. He was known at the first vet we went to as "The Screamer", due to his amazingly loud baying. The second vet called him "The Scrapper" as he was, to be nice, more than happy to fight with anything regardless of size. He had several brawls in the vet's waiting room and he had a neighbor's Doberman absolutely terrified of him after my dog attacked him when the Doberman started tossing around his Yorkie buddy "Tarzan". Hard to believe he would be 51 if he was alive today..

Great, loving dogs. I am on my second one. They are VERY food motivated. My latest one has opened the pantry and the refrigerator (and he is 14 years old) to eat until he looked like he was going to explode. They can be really loud with their baying and sometimes seem to do it for no reason at all, maybe just to tell the world that they are around. I got a shock collar for my first beagle because his nose would hit the ground and his ears would turn off. Only had to shock him twice and listened great after that. They also seem to like their comfort. I can't imagine not having one in my life.

They are a meme er of the hound family, just say no

The one I had was a great dog but very stubborn and very hard to housetrain.

Our 1yr old house trained the puppy. Only a couple accidents. The puppy followed the dog everywhere. Dog went outside for business, the pup followed for the same. THAT, at least, went well.

Thanks for all the info.  We named him Rocket because of the way he shoots around the house.  He has more energy than the wife and me put together.  He is learning quickly with treats as a reward.  Very food motivated.

A couple of items of advice:

1. He WILL be loud and noisy. Just accept it. He sounds like he's got the wall bouncing down already.
2. Don't ever leave anything on a shelf or table that the dog would want to eat. My dog ate a huge ham that my mother left to cool down on the kitchen table, and then forgot about for a little while. The ham was about 20% of his body weight and he slept all day after he gobbled it up, including the ham, strings, and a fair chunk of the aluminum foil it was covered with.
3 He will be stubborn. It's as sure as he's breathing. My dog was easy to housebreak, but walking him was like being pulled by a small winch. After a couple of years, I got to the point I walked so fast that he didn't pull me anymore.

Great dogs, friends, hunters and loud.

What else do you need to know?